OB Rag

Editordude: Steven Mihailovich has quickly become one of the best reporters to cover OB and Point Loma. Here’s his latest on the morphing of the OB Town Council into something different.

By Steven Mihailovich / Pt Loma – OB Weekly / May 25, 2024

The Ocean Beach Community Foundation, formerly known for nearly six decades as the Ocean Beach Town Council, reported preliminary findings of an ongoing audit that revealed thousands of dollars unaccounted for in the various bank accounts and credit cards held by the Town Council.

The audit was triggered by a financial scandal that emerged under former OBTC president Corey Bruins.

By George Vargas / San Diego Union-Tribune / May27, 2024

Bill Walton’s passion for basketball was rivaled only by his passion for rock ‘n’ roll, in particular the music of the Grateful Dead. The San Diego-bred basketball icon — who died Monday at the age of 71 following a battle with cancer — saw the Dead perform more than 850 times, starting with a 1967 Mother’s Day show at San Diego State University’s Aztec Bowl.

“I loved the Dead right away, the first time I heard them,” Walton told this writer in a 1992 Union-Tribune interview. “I loved the speed, the dancing, the rhythm, the creativity. It’s just like being on a basketball team. Basketball, like good, creative, rock music, is never the same.” …

In recent decades Walton sat in as often as his schedule allowed with the Electric Waste Band, a leading Dead tribute band, at its weekly performances at Winstons in Ocean Beach.

by Ernie McCray

Looking through a box
of my mother’s things
I came across
“The Negro,”
a magazine
my mother used to subscribe to
when I was a child,
this particular issue
dating back to
June, 1945
when I was a seven-year-old,
and it brings back memories
of me listening
to conversations
my mother and her friends
engaged in
about articles they had read,

By Judi Curry

I am not a native San Diegan, but I bet that I have been here longer than many of the readers of this article.  I am, however, a native Californian, born and raised in Los Angeles. I have lived in Northern California while attending school at Berkeley and while husband and I both had good jobs in the Bay Area. I also lived in Arizona while husband and I had top jobs in neighboring school districts and I live in Bangor, Maine. But I always came back to California.

My experiences in these different areas provided me with many different situations – some very similar to ones facing us today.  For example, when we lived in San Simeon, following a big storm, Highway One literally fell into the ocean.  That road was closed for over a year while it was repaired.  (I have been told that since I left the area they have been numerous storms and the road has been closed again and again.)

Frequently, while living in Northern California, bridges were closed because of flooding, because of landslides and because of decay. 

It’s now obvious that Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito has been playing flag football in his court.

Two flags associated with Donald Trump’s ‘stop the steal’ movement have been flown outside homes owned by Alito. And for the first flag, Alito punted the ball.

An upside-down American flag, which has come to be a symbol associated with Trump, was displayed outside Alito’s home in northern Virginia. A photo widely distributed this past week shows the flag flying on Jan. 17, 2021, just days after Trump’s insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Dozens of the pro-Trump rioters were carrying similarly inverted flags and chanting slogans like “Stop the Steal.”

And now a second flag of a type carried by those rioters was displayed outside Alito’s beach vacation home in New Jersey last summer. The “Appeal to Heaven” flag which is a white flag with a green pine tree was seen flying at the Alito beach home.

By Christina Bravo / NBC7 / May 22, 2024

A gray whale who has been spotted frequenting San Diego’s Mission Bay in recent months was last seen in the inlet on Sunday. And, despite what some concerned San Diegans might think, the whale is not there by accident.

Jeni Smith, curator of SeaWorld San Diego’s rescue program, said their team and specialists with NOAA have been monitoring the whale since March and have not seen any signs of distress. The whale, which may or may not be the same one every time, comes and goes through the 820-foot-wide channel entrance as it pleases.

By Paul Krueger

Eight Hells Angels accused of various roles in a racist attack on three African-American men last year in Ocean Beach have pleaded guilty and now face punishments ranging from 60 days in local custody to nine years in state prison.

The three victims of that brutal June 6, 2023 attack were enjoying a night out on Newport Avenue. Prosecutors say one of the men apparently spoke to a biker’s girlfriend, which might have prompted the attack. The suspects allegedly called the victims a racial epithet and told them “they didn’t belong in the neighborhood.”

By Gary Wonacott

In November of 2022, I submitted a story to the Rag that was published about a shrinking Mission Beach and the incorrect basis for the calculation of Tier 4 short term rental licenses by the City of San Diego.

At that time, I had an attorney send a demand letter to SANDAG, the STR Office with the City, the mayor and other officials requesting that the correct 2020 census numbers be used. The SANDAG estimates are 3,607 housing units in Mission Beach, compared to a number that I confirmed of 3,177.

By Judi Curry

I have had dogs for as long as I can remember.  Usually they have been Golden Retrievers, but in the past few years I have had other breeds.

After my last Golden passed away, I was so devastated that I wanted to have a dog right away and I contacted a rescue that had a Husky/Australian Shepherd mix available. She had just been rescued from a “kill center” in San Bernardino.  Rescued after just giving birth to 9 puppies and weighing in at 27 pounds!  She was being fostered at a home in the ranch lands of San Diego along with her 9 puppies.  It was the day that she was going to be euthanized at the dog pound.

Gianni Buonomo Vintners Set to Move to Midway District

From SanDiegoVille

San Diego’s award-winning Gianni Buonomo Vinters urban winery is leaving Ocean Beach after nearly a decade to relocate to a new facility in the Midway District, which some consider Point Loma.

Longtime Ocean Beach resident Keith Rolle opened his urban winery Gianni Buonomo Vintners on Newport Avenue in OB in early 2016.

By Kate Callen

Here are my four favorite moments during that comic opera of a San Diego City Council hearing on Tuesday on Uptown planning.

Von Wilpert reciting Council policy that “the City does not direct or recommend the election, appointment, or removal of voting members of CPGs” and telling her chastened colleagues, “What I feel I’m being asked to do today is to vote on who should sit in what seat.”

The razor-sharp Uptown Planners presentation revealing that, on the diversity front, their group and Vibrant match the Uptown district closely in all but one demographic: Vibrant skews wealthy on the socioeconomic scale.